Perseverance

Has got me thinking.

What an achievement. I watched the landing whilst at work and held back tears only through an act of will and surreptitious use of tissues. Every single person who had a hand in landing Perseverance on Mars has mad an impact on humanity that will be felt for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

That is awe inspiring. Truly gobsmacking.

Despite the joyous high of the landing, over the next few days, I have found that I’ve fallen into a slump. That’s not the best way to describe it, either but I’m failing to find the right words.

I guess the landing of Perseverance and the people involved have sparked a cascade of ennui within me. Again, not a perfect word but one that will have to suffice. My job is good. Let me get that straight. I help people via diagnosis of disease. It is, if not one degree away from direct helping, at maximum it is two.

It is a job in which I go to and then I leave. I don’t think about further than that or in anymore depth. Perhaps that is, in a sense, another failing of mine. Perhaps I should care more, perhaps if I put the effort into caring, then maybe I would derive a sense of joy and purpose from it.

Regardless, I don’t. And I reason with myself that outside of work I am building something, doing something, that will bring me joy and give me that sense of purpose.

I try to write, which is something I haven’t been doing over the past few days, I try to read, but again, it is hard to do when all you want to do is sit down, dose yourself with the mind-numbing draught of Netflix, and eat shitty food.

What will I leave behind when I die? And if I were to die tomorrow, what would I have left?

A few poorly written novels, a lot of half-written ones, a lot of books, and not much else. Memories that will fragment and fall to dust over time. Feelings that will twist and turn into things that suit the person feeling them.

I will never be able to say that I helped put a rover on Mars. That I, no matter how small, made a small addition to the betterment of humanity.

Maybe my scope is what I need to change. Maybe I have some sense of entitled ambition and belief that I should be making a change.

The scope is too large. If I zoom in on myself, family, and friends, I’m sure I do make positive changes. I’m sure almost everyone does. And perhaps that should be enough for me. Maybe that should be all I strive for.

Would I be happy then? Would I not be feeling how I am at the moment?

Then again, I struggle with the idea of not making as big an impact as I possibly can. Why not aim for the stars as the old adage goes? Why not reach up as high as I can and even further?

And then, when I fail, will I be able to drag myself out of the ashes of my torched dreams?

Maybe that is the problem. The idea of giving up. I will fail. But perhaps the key for me is to take a leaf out of the rovers book and Persevere.

This has been a honest stream of consciousness post and for that I apologise as my consciousness is pretty rough.